DPAC Committee Meetings

Letter from the DPAC EXECUTIVE:

January 20, 2016
Dear School District 39 (VSB) Parents:
DPAC is the Vancouver District Parent Advisory Committee. We represent the Parent Advisory Councils (PACs) of the Vancouver School Board (VSB) with the common goal of assuring our children receive the best possible education. DPAC is composed of representatives from PACs and meets twice per month at the Board of Education building at 1588 West Broadway in Vancouver.

DPAC:
* Supports PACs and shares parents’ views at the district level.
* Represents the views of city parents to the Vancouver Board of Education through participation on school board standing and advisory committees.
* Meets on the second and fourth Thursday of the month at 7pm at the VSB offices and all parents are welcome. DPAC covers parking and childcare.
*Currently has funding available to support learning activities of our members. Please be in touch to find out more!

DPAC’s day-to-day activities are performed by the volunteer executive council which is made up of up to 12 parents who are elected by the PACs. (We also have a staff person starting soon.) Currently there are vacancies on the executive committee and parents are encouraged to consider putting their names forward. The table officers and executive committee speaks on the behalf of DPAC. All PAC members and parents are welcome to executive meetings. We encourage all PACs to have a DPAC representative to attend our meetings on a regular basis and are appreciative that many PACs are already doing so. While all parents are welcome to attend our meetings, only the executive members vote at our meetings. We also encourage parents to become DPAC representatives at VSB advisory committees.

DPAC invites all parents and PAC executives to subscribe to the DPAC mailing list for up-to-date information about DPAC activities, DPAC initiatives, and developments at the school board level. In particular, we request that each PAC sign up a DPAC representative for your PAC to help us ensure that the PACs remain up to date on developments at the district level.

The DPAC constitution is out of date and needs to be updated. The DPAC executive is asking for input from parents to help us make our bylaws more effective so we can do our job better.
Our current bylaws can be found here: http://www.vsb.bc.ca/dpac-bylaws.
Please send feedback to DPAC by email to dpac.sd39@gmail.com or in person by attending a DPAC executive meeting. Please let us know ahead of time if you wish to speak in person so we can add time in the schedule.
Additional feedback will be requested throughout the renewal process when drafts of the new constitution and bylaws are made ready. DPAC encourages parents to provide feedback at each step.
Sincerely,
SD39 (VSB) DPAC Executive

Here is the Report from Jane Wu after her first meeting:

My First DPAC Meeting

As a new member of the DPAC family, I attended the meeting soon after I became a DPAC representative of PW.

I would like to share my first impression to the DPAC meeting, regardless the content of the meeting as I believe the meeting minutes will be sent to us later.

The format: It was a round table meeting and with a facilitator, a meeting minute taker, and with agenda in writing handed out to every attendant, although I thought it would be better if it were sent to us before we came to the meeting. It was much more formal than what I’ve expected. My expectation comes from meeting of the Chinese parents working groups, who usually have meetings while having morning tea and Kathy Gong will send the meeting minutes through our Wechat platform.

The attendants: I read from VSB website that there were over 100 schools in VSB but we had only 10 attendants to the meeting including the 5 DPAC executives. And I learnt that not every school has a PAC, and not every DPAC representative showed up in the meeting. I came to realize that PW PAC is the best one, or one among the best developed PAC with volunteer members so devoted, and activities so well planned and organized. This was proved when the representative from Thunderbird Elementary search for suggestion on founding the PAC of her school and on how to get more parents involved in, etc..

The role: Though not having the right to vote on any of the solutions, this role is not a role to LISTEN to the meeting, but to act as liaisons between DPAC committee and PAC of the school. We can’t vote but we should show up for our school and let our voice heard in the discussion. I am so happy that Linda invited me to the PAC meeting where I believe I can learn what PW PAC is concerned most and what we need to present in DPAC meeting next time.

I am honor to be offered this job, on which I can learn a lot as a parent, and hopefully I can do something for our PAC.